Saturday, November 7, 2009

Transfigured Night

The Left Bank Quartet
David Salness, violin - Sally McLain, violin
Katherine Murdock, viola - Evelyn Elsing, cello
with Maria Lambros, viola & Kenneth Slowik, cello

THE PROGRAM

String Quartet Op. 127 in E-Flat Major (1825)
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Maestoso; Allegro
Adagio ma non troppo e molto cantabile
Scherzo: Vivace
Allegro

The Left Bank Quartet

Intermission

Sextet for two violins, two violas and two cellos
(from the opera "Capriccio"), Op. 85 (TrV 279a) (1941)
Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Andante con moto

The Left Bank Quartet, Ms. Lambros, Mr. Slowik

Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4 (1899)
Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)
for two violins, two violas, and two cellos

The Left Bank Quartet, Ms. Lambros, Mr. Slowik

 

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

String Quartet, Op. 127, in E-Flat Major (1825)
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Beethoven’s creative life has long been considered in thirds, put simply: early (classic), middle (heroic), late (spiritual). Op. 127 is the first of his late-period string quartets. Beethoven’s late quartets, composed between February 1824 and November 1826, were his final towering achievements before his death in March 1827. After a fourteen-year abandonment of the genre, Beethoven was moved to pick up quartet composition again by a commission for three of them from a young Russian prince. Nicholas Galitzin, a cellist married to a pianist, had already transcribed Beethoven’s piano sonatas into string quartets and piano quintets, presumably so that chamber groups that he formed could play them. Beethoven began serious work on the commissions in 1824 and completed all the ‘Galitzin quartets’ by November the next year.

The March 1825 Viennese premiere of Op. 127 was not a success, but soon enough, after working closely with the musicians, Beethoven saw it through a second, praiseworthy hearing that led to even more performances. He even encouraged it to be played twice on single programs, the second performance not as a spontaneous encore, but a planned exercise. This was highly unusual programming, but Beethoven’s late-period music was not always immediately comprehensible to contemporary players or audiences. As Robert Adelson, who has done considerable research concerning the circumstances and performers of the first concerts featuring Op. 127 has written, “In a double performance, the performers and composer entered into a compact with the audience for the express purpose of facilitating the comprehension of difficult music.” Adelson found one laudatory response to this practice that testified, “This is one of the most unusual works of the great master, hardly clear at the first hearing, and for which reason the expert artists also played the quartet twice in succession, but worked with such genius, that the audience swooned.” At house concerts, the two performances might be separated by dinner. The idea took hold enough so that Beethoven’s next quartet was premiered at a double performance, but the practice was abandoned after that in Vienna. It is not unknown today, however. The contemporary ensemble Da Capo Chamber Players was named for its habit of repetition: “Da capo is a musical term that means ‘back to the beginning,’ so when playing new pieces, we often play them twice to help the audience understand them better,” reported the group’s pianist in 1987.

Robert Adelson quotes Prince Galitzin’s response to receiving the first of his three quartets. It reflects the “infernal diligence [höllischem Fleiß]” that amateurs had to apply to learning it: “I have many thanks to give to you, worthy Monsieur de Beethoven, for the precious parcel with the sublime quartet which I have just received. I have already played it several times and I find in it all the genius of the master, and when the playing of it has become more perfect, the pleasure will be all the greater” [emphasis added by Adelson].

However difficult Op. 127 was for its early players and audiences, by a century later and well after, it was hailed as a model of lyricism. W. Wight Roberts, writing in Music & Letters in 1930, said of Beethoven’s use of E-flat Major “…it may almost be said to typify the mellow, chivalrous side of him. Here he is no gaunt Prometheus, shaking his fist at Fate. There are places, in two quartets [the other is Op. 74], where he is more like the god of the golden lyre.” Joseph Kerman, in The Beethoven Quartets (Knopf, 1967), agrees: “Lyricism—it has been said many times—is at the heart of this quartet, inspiring the intimate aveu of the opening movement, the popular swing of the Finale, and the great stream of melody in the Adagio variations.”
Though the quartet comprises the standard four movements, its shape is unusual for its time because of various introductions and codas it contains. In the first movement, a slow E-flat Maestoso in two opens up to a three–quarter time Allegro. It is not simply there to settle the audience. Its integral importance becomes clear when it is repeated in F major and C major during the development of this short movement.

The ‘free’ variation form second movement is in A flat. We hear a theme-with-codetta and six variations, played Adagio ma non troppo e molto cantabile [very songful]. Meters in three and two alternate as abruptly as key changes do. The first variation in 12/8 contrasts crescendos and decrescendos. Variation two, in four, bounces pizzicato low notes off the legato violins. Suddenly we are in a new key (E major!) and the tempo is Adagio molto espressivo in two. The insightful Michael Steinberg wrote, “The manner of this variation lies somewhere between opera and hymn and is a sublime heightening of both styles. Here is the expressive climax of this extraordinary movement.” Recall that this is a product of late-period ‘spiritual’ Beethoven. In variation four we are back in A flat and 12/8 time for a showy conversation between first violin and cello. The fifth variation is in a sotto voce D flat major/minor. The first violin runs off with variation six, still in 12/8 and then, after a half measure of silence, the movement ends quietly in A flat.
Opening with explosive pizzicatos followed by a fugue, the Scherzando vivace in three-quarter time dances between counterpoint and solidity. A Presto ‘trio’ section in E-flat minor and a fast coda also provide contrast.
The strutting fourth-movement Finale is in E major and two-four time until, in an Allegro con moto coda in 6/8, we are sent spinning in a swirl of happy celebration.

For further exploration:
• “Beethoven’s String Quartet in E Flat Op. 127: A Study of the First Performances” by Robert Adelson. Music & Letters, Vol. 79, No. 2 (May, 1998), pp. 219-243.
• Michael Steinberg’s notes on Beethoven’s quartets appear in The Beethoven Quartet Companion, edited by Robert Winter and Robert Martin (U of California Press, 1994).
• Free, printable scores and parts to this quartet (including transcriptions for piano and piano four hands) are available online at http://imslp.org/wiki/String_Quartet_No.12_
(Beethoven,_Ludwig_van)

Sextet for two violins, two violas, and two cellos
(from the opera Capriccio), Op. 85 (TrV 279a) (1941)
Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

Richard Strauss created this string sextet as the Prelude to his last opera, Capriccio, first performed in 1942. Subtitled “A Conversation Piece for Music,” Capriccio deals with an operatic chicken-egg dilemma: which comes first – the words or the music? A poet and a composer, both in love with Countess Madeleine, collaborate on an opera whose ending depends on her choice between them. Strauss, who had a hand in writing the libretto, chose a lush, strings-only, wordless overture for Capriccio, so we can easily imagine where he stood on the question of which is more important, even though the last strains of the sextet play under the opening scene’s sentences. His opera itself, which includes a character who reminds the artists that without producers, their works remain lifeless (he’s a bass), dismisses such pondering; its completely practical bottom line is, “Das Souper ist serviert [Dinner is served].” Although the sextet beautifully sets the stage for Capriccio, it stands on its own as lovely, long-lined, late-romantic chamber music.

Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4 (1899)
for two violins, two violas, and two cellos
Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)

Programmatically based on a five-part poem by Schoenberg contemporary Richard Dehmel, this late-Romantic/early-Modern string sextet is considered Schoenberg’s earliest instrumental masterpiece. It is his most frequently performed creation (along with its 1917 string orchestra arrangement), though Schoenberg reminds us, “It shall not be forgotten that this work, at its first performance in Vienna, was hissed and caused riots and fist fights.”
The structure of Dehmel’s poem, which is inscribed at the head of the score to Verklärte Nacht, is 1) a six-line description of a man and woman who have recently met taking a moonlit walk in the ‘bare, cold woods’ 2) a twelve-line narration where she tells him she’s pregnant by choice but wishes she’d met him first; 3) a four-line description of her stumbling along not quite knowing where to look after this confession; 4) an eleven-line narration where he says her radiant condition makes him feel warm and childlike himself; 5) a three-line description where they embrace and their environment is transfigured into a ‘high, clear night.’
People have argued the structure of this work from many sides, some of them working sonata procedures into their analyses, some concentrating more on non-sonata-form thematic and harmonic material. The composer would soon launch into what we now term his ‘atonal’ period, but this work is ‘spun’ from what Walter Frisch calls a distinctive “web of harmonic or tonal relationships.” Put simply, it ‘transfigures’ D minor into D major over a span of more than three hundred measures: the final 80 measures can be considered a coda.
The Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna dissects this single movement work into five audio segments: Sehr langsam [Very slowly, measures 1-99, dominated by D minor], Breiter [More broadly, mm. 100-200, with many key changes and much chromaticism], Schwer betont [Heavily stressed, mm 201-228, more-or-less in B-flat major], Sehr breit und langsam [Very broadly and slowly, mm. 229-369, beginning and ending in D major, with excursions to keys with six sharps, then five flats, then one flat, and back to five], and Sehr ruhig [Very calmly, mm. 370-418, in D major].
This does not correspond completely with the composer’s own explanation of his program, and it may well be that our best approach to hearing this work is to heed the composer’s later advice to recognize that “it offers the possibility to be appreciated as ‘pure’ music.” He even went so far as to advise that we “forget the poem” and enjoy the portrayal of nature (woods at night) and human feeling (from confession to acceptance, loneliness to love) at the heart of his effort in this work.

For further exploration:
Walter Frisch, The early Works of Arnold Schoenberg, 1893-1908 (1993, University of California Press)

Arnold Schoenberg’s own program note for Transfigured Night is posted here:
http://www.schoenberg.org/6_archiv/music/works/op/compositions_op4_programnotes_e.htm

 

© 2009 Bonnie Jo Dopp
Bonnie Jo Dopp (MLS, MM) is Librarian Emerita from the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library at the University of Maryland. She has been writing about music for more than thirty-five years.

 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Cellist Evelyn Elsing has won prizes in the Munich International Cello Competition and the Washington International String Competition. She has concertized across the United States, Europe, and Japan. A chamber music enthusiast, Ms. Elsing has collaborated with members of the Cleveland, Muir, and Guarneri Quartets. She is cellist of the Ecco Trio and the Left Bank Quartet.

Washington area solo engagements have included performances at the Phillips Collection, the National Gallery of Art, the Library of Congress, the Corcoran Gallery, and the Kennedy Center. Recognitions include the University of Michigan’s highest award to a performer – the Stanley Medal, a Solo Recitalist Fellowship Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Citation for Exceptional Leadership and Merit from the American String Teachers Association. A member of the summer faculties of the Interlochen Center for the Arts and International Workshops, Ms. Elsing has participated in the Aspen, Ravinia, and Spoleto Festivals. She is Professor of Cello at the University of Maryland School of Music, College Park.

For fifteen years, Ms. Elsing was principal cellist of the Handel Festival Orchestra. Currently Artistic Co-Director of the Left Bank Concert Society, she was a regular performer with the historic Theater Chamber Players, birthplace of the Left Bank Quartet.

Violinist Sally McLain was raised in Washington, DC and is a graduate of the DC Youth Orchestra Program. She received her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees with High Distinction from Indiana University, where she studied with and was assistant to James Buswell. She has participated in the Tanglewood Music Center, Bach Aria Festival and Institute, and the New York String Orchestra. Ms. McLain performs throughout the Washington, DC area as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral musician. Solo engagements have included performances at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, the National Gallery of Art, the Corcoran Gallery and Lisner Auditorium. She has performed chamber music on the Embassy Series, with National Musical Arts, and with the 20th Century Consort. She frequently performs as an orchestral musician with the National Symphony Orchestra and the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra and served as concertmaster for the Washington Chamber Symphony for ten seasons. Ms. McLain is a member of the Left Bank Quartet and the Potomac String Quartet.

Katherine Murdock, violist, has performed throughout the world with such groups as Music from Marlboro, the Boston Chamber Music Society, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Brandenburg Ensemble, and the New York Philomusica. She has been a participant in numerous festivals, including the Edinburgh, Salzburg, and Gulbenkian Festivals, the International Musicians Seminar at Prussia Cove, and in the U.S. at Mostly Mozart, Ravinia, Saratoga, La Musica, and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. She has recorded as soloist for West German Radio and the BBC, and has appeared on the ‘Great Performers at Lincoln Center’ series as a guest of the Beaux Arts Trio. During the past seasons she has performed with the Muir and Vermeer String Quartets, has toured New Zealand with the New Zealand Quartet, South America with the New York Philharmonic, and Europe with a chamber ensemble from the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. From 1988 to 1994 Ms. Murdock was a member of the Mendelssohn String Quartet. With this group she toured internationally as well as held the positions of Artist in Residence at Harvard University and the University of Delaware. She is currently on the faculty of SUNY Stony Brook and the University of Maryland; in the summer she is on the artist faculty of the Yellow Barn and Kneisel Hall festivals. Currently violist with the Left Bank Quartet, and longtime performer with the historic Theater Chamber Players, Ms. Murdock also performs and records as a member of the Los Angeles Piano Quartet.

Soloist, concertmaster and chamber musician for over twenty-five years, violinist David Salness has attained international recognition as a performing artist and teacher. He has appeared in such renowned venues as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy and Lincoln Centers, Salle Pleyel, Concertgebouw, and Wigmore Hall. His performances are broadcast by National Public Radio, Radio France, and the British and Canadian Broadcast Corporations. Mr. Salness’ recordings are found on the RCA, Telarc, and Centaur labels among others.

Mr. Salness has collaborated with members of the Guarneri, Juilliard, and Cleveland Quartets. He has enjoyed a long association with New York’s Chautauqua Festival and has participated in the Aspen, Ravinia, Newport, Banff, and Mostly Mozart Festivals. He has appeared with such noted ensembles as the Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, Orpheus, and the Brandenburg Ensemble of New York. Mr. Salness was for twelve years a member of the Audubon Quartet and won the Deuxieme Grand Prix as a member of Nisaika in the 1984 Evian International String Quartet Competition.

He began his teaching career as assistant to David Cerone at the Curtis Institute and also the Meadowmount School of Music in New York, where Mr. Salness returned to serve for five years as a member of the Artist Faculty from 1998 to 2002. Having also been a guest faculty member at John Hopkins’ Peabody Conservatory, Mr. Salness is currently Associate Professor of Violin at the University of Maryland and Distinguished Teacher of Violin at the Brevard Music Center and is Head of Chamber Music Activities at both institutions. Mr. Salness’s students have garnered top prizes from such major international compositions as Indianapolis, Evian/Bordeaux, Portsmouth, Naumburg, Menuhin, Schneider, and Banff. Violinist with the Left Bank Quartet, Mr. Salness is Artistic Co-Director of the Left Bank Concert Society.

Violist Maria Lambros has performed as a chamber musician throughout the world as a member of three of the country’s finest string quartets in venues such as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, London’s Wigmore Hall, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, New York’s Lincoln Center and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. She was a member of the renowned Ridge String Quartet, which was nominated for the 1993 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance for their recording of the Dvorak Piano Quintets with pianist Rudolf Firkusny on the RCA label. The recording won Europe’s prestigious Diapason d’Or in the same year. She was also a founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning Meliora String Quartet, which was Quartet-in-Residence at the Spoleto Festivals of the U.S., Italy and Australia, and which recorded Mendelssohn’s Octet with the Cleveland Quartet on the Telarc label. She was most recently a member of the Mendelssohn String Quartet, and currently performs with the New York based chamber ensemble, La Fenice.

Maria Lambros appears regularly at a number of major chamber music festivals, including those of Helsinki, Aspen, Vancouver, Santa Fe, Tanglewood, La Jolla, Caramoor, Norfolk, Rockport, Skaneateles, Bard, Chamber Music West and New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival. She has performed with the Peabody Trio and the Guarneri, Cleveland, Juilliard, Muir, Brentano, Borromeo, Colorado and Orion Quartets, among others. A native of Missoula, Montana, she was named one of “Montana’s Leading Artists and Entertainers of the 2oth Century,” a millenial list highlighting the last 100 years of Montanans’ exceptional contributions to art and culture. A devoted teacher, Ms. Lambros is currently a member of the chamber music faculty of the Peabody Conservatory of Music and the Yellow Barn Music School.

Artistic director of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society, Kenneth Slowik first established his international reputation as cellist and viola da gamba player as a founding member of the Smithsonian Chamber Players, the Axelrod and Smithson quartets, the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra, and the Castle Trio. Subsequently, he has appeared frequently with the Amsterdam-based ensemble Archibudelli, and has been a soloist and/or conductor with numerous orchestras, including the National Symphony, the Baltimore, Vancouver, and Québec Symphonies, and the Cleveland Orchestra. Since becoming conductor of the Santa Fe Bach Festival in 1998, and serving as conductor of the Santa Fe Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra from 1999-2004, he has been devoting increasing amounts of time to conducting the orchestral, oratorio, and operatic repertoire with both modern- and period-instrument ensembles on both sides of the Atlantic. His performances in this capacity have also elicited enthusiastic responses from audiences and critics alike. His extensive discography, spanning composers from Monteverdi and Bach to Schönberg and Mahler, includes more than sixty fortepianist, organist, harpsichordist, and conductor. His latest recording in the latter role (Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde) received a 2008 Grammy Award nomination. Dr. Slowik has presented lectures at colleges and universities throughout the Americas and has organized and contributed to a number of symposia and colloquia at the Smithsonian Institution. He serves on the faculties of the University of Maryland and L’Académie de musique du Domaine Forget and has been Artistic Director of the Baroque Performance Institute at the Oberlin College Conservatory since 1993.

David Keplinger is a literature professor and directs the Masters of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing at American University. He’s the author of three books of poetry, most recently The Prayers of Others, which was published in 2006 and won the Colorado Book Award. He’s lived in DC for two years and has spoken on the subject of John Keats in the adult education program here at Dumbarton.